[0.17.0] Campaign: Biter attacks ramp up too quickly

[SomeLazyBastard]

I met the requirement for magazines produced per minute due to the amount of steel plates I had queued up on the belt, but production then dropped off once the backlog had been worked through and about 10 minutes later all turrets ran out of ammo in spite of my constantly reloading them as fast as a I could for the last few minutes of the game.

I'm not sure if biter swarms dramatically increase in size once the player clears the automation requirements or if it's purely a function of time, but it was certainly a surprise.

[SomeLazyBastard]

I didn't realize that was the end of the campaign... I guess it's ok to have a bit of a difficulty spike at the end. I suppose telemetry will let you know if new players are having too hard of a time or not.

[bobucles]

Wow! That wave defense is MEAN! I'm building 8+ turrets on each side and it's still hardly enough to stem the waves. That's WAY too hard for a player's first defense mission.

Forests are easier than deserts simply because the trees absorb the extra pollution. I think it's not unfair to say that the player's first training wheels map should be in a heavy forest to down down the difficulty.

[Light]

Forests are easier than deserts simply because the trees absorb the extra pollution. I think it's not unfair to say that the player's first training wheels map should be in a heavy forest to down down the difficulty.

Trees aren't relevant, they're being spawned in groups every few seconds on both sides.

Biter nests are actually set to passive mode and are just for show.

[bobucles]

Trees aren't relevant, they're being spawned in groups every few seconds on both sides.

Biter nests are actually set to passive mode and are just for show.

That's, not actually comforting. The pollution mechanic naturally ramps up difficulty according to player skill. More skilled players typically build larger factories, and big factories make big problems. The tutorial is probably one of the most obvious places where you WANT difficulty to be matched with player skill. Because if a new player can't figure things out, they're definitely not going to figure it out under a pile of 100 biters.

In terms of a 1-shot demo, yeah that's probably fine. Players will strive to master the demo difficulty and see if they like that sort of game. I don't think it's appropriate as a training mission though.

[Chucky]

I just tried the new Tutorial and hope the new Biter balance is not like that in the main game... I'm kind of a noob at building efficient defenses, so the first really big wave killed my base after 2 and a half hours gameplay or so.

[DoubleThought]

This problem seems to persist in 0.17.3.

I've never been the best at securing my base from biters. However, the waves of biters were somewhat ridiculous. I actually had to win the tutorial by kiting the biters to a nest of gun turrets while my labs (with no tech production) finished that last final bit of research. In fact, I was able to see, off to the side of the screen, that the biter density was so high that some were forced to be stationary in a mass of biters!

This was after one restart, because I lost the previous restart. If, as an experienced player, I had so much difficulty, I can't help but imagine how much difficulty a new player would have.